


under no enchantment

by celestialskiff



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fairy, Femslash, Letters, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Trauma, the author really hates Walter Pole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:52:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4990981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Emma did not seem to realise how important it was to keep quiet about magic and to look at the horizon as though nothing was happening. </i> Emma is angry. Bella copes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under no enchantment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afterism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/gifts).



_Extracts from Letters to Mrs Arabella Strange from the Lady Pole, London, Summer 1817_

… Roses, roses always in my thoughts. I dream of roses. It's worse when I see them sold on the streets as though they were not weapons. Sir Walter controls my fortune, of course he does, but the injustice makes me want to rend the tapestries in his rooms, to pull down his paintings, to scream. I cannot. I had them remove the rose bushes from the garden, I told the maid to wash her hands in lavender, I would rather smell dung all day and night than another rose, and still roses everywhere … 

*

… Such kind letters you write, so full of motherly concern! Wear shawls, do not go out too late, do not let yourself get excited. Think less of flowers, take up embroidery. No, Bella, that will not help. You know I am not in hysterics. I am dealing quite calmly with magic. I am surprised you have not smashed any mirrors, taken to eating with bats, or submerged yourself naked in a Venetian canal. Sitting about drinking tea is not at all a rational response! You know that just as well as I do. 

I feel magic everywhere. I do not wish to. I wish to hang every wizard, cut the throat of every fairy! And yet I feel the threads of it under my feet. I look at the sky and know what is behind the clouds. It seems to be within the wood grain of every table, and in the movement of even the oldest cart-horse. Is it so bad in Italy? Do you escape? … 

*

… Sir Walter wishes to send me away. No longer these four rooms in a house in Hackney and the maid, though I have just come to tolerate the maid, but some bleak place on a moor. No, I have told him. No, there is more magic in the country. He looks at me as though I am insane, as though I have entirely made up the subject of magic. I want to bite him, right on the wrinkle between his eyebrows, but that would certainly give him leave to lock me up, so instead I glare. No, not the country, and nowhere in the north. I have learnt to keep my voice and hands steady and my face firm. No twitching, no lip biting. Before, I never needed to practice to appear rational. Now I must look at myself in the mirror and coach myself through each expression … 

*

… In my dream, we are holding hands. We always held hands because we had to dance, but this is a good dream, and there is no dancing. We are somewhere green and quiet and there is a warm wind, and we are holding hands … 

*

… I feel like I have never been alive. Half my life was given to the fairy king; half my life to sleeplessness and hell. I have never been alive but only moved from one form of agony to another! O, Bella, I do not know if I am angry or simply wretched. I do not know what I want. There is no peace, even now I dream of roses, I wake each night choking. I was ill as a child: it seems another life. No one wished to remember I was ill. My mother had me dressed for my coming out, even though I could not stand through the fittings. How sweet you look, she would say, while my cheeks turned green with pain and nausea.

Then I was strong – the wizard made me strong. How strange it was to be strong, how strange to have feet that could dance, hands that could sew all morning, a mouth made for laughter. For a time even the fairy could not take my strength from me. For a time … 

* 

… I did not think I would be so much alone, dear Bella, once I had escaped. Of course I did not think I would ever escape, did you? And now I am alone much as I was before. Even the maid is afraid of me, though she does not sense any magic and walks quite calmly through patterns woven into the grass or through a trellis of invisible bells and I am glad for her solid pink form and the way she jumps when I scream. But it is so tedious to have only the maid and nightmares for company! It is is quite unbearable … 

*

… Dearest, of course you are a comfort. You are the only thing that makes this tolerable! Only you are in Venice, and then you are in Florence, and I am sure both are very pretty and you say there is less magic there, but it is still quite unreasonable of you to be so far away. But then it is selfish of me to wish you to come back to England. Only write to Sir Walter, he thinks you are a sensible woman; tell him I am a sensible woman too and I cannot bear another moment of his interferences … 

**

_Calais, Autumn 1817_

The rain was thin and constant, a grey, English rain. Bella felt it fall, grimly, over the brim of her hat and down the back of her neck. She thought of Shropshire, of home. 

She expected Emma to be thin, to be a half-formed, exhausted creature. But Emma was strong, as she had been strong even when ill. She had grown a little stout, and her complexion was pink. 

“Darling,” Bella had said, when she had met her on the dock, and took her hands in both of hers. They had kissed, briefly, on the cheeks, and Emma would not consent to be driven back to the hotel. 

“Oh, let us walk,” she had said. “I can't stand being cooped up a moment longer.”

So Bella had the luggage sent on ahead, and took Emma's arm firmly in her own, and hoped Emma would not go on being eccentric. 

“I was afraid,” Emma said, “that I would see a mermaid or some other sort of horrible fairy creature at sea. Whenever I do anything new I am so afraid there will be magic in it. But there were just men smoking on the deck, and a whole lot of silly women talking about the Paris fashions. It was terribly dull.” 

“But better than a mermaid,” Bella said. She hadn't thought about mermaids at all, and was glad Emma hadn't encountered any. Emma did not seem to realise how important it was to keep quiet about magic and to look at the horizon as though nothing was happening. 

“Oh yes,” Emma squeezed her arm. “It's better already on the continent. I feel freer. Magic doesn't infect the paving stones and the streets and the clouds in quite the same way as in England. It'll get just as bad, I suppose, but it hasn't yet.” 

Bella hadn't had anyone to speak to about this. She lowered her voice. “Do you think we'll ever be free from it?” 

“I don't suppose so. The wizards let it in, and they let it get into us. It's like bread mould in a bakery.” 

Bella thought this a very unfortunate comparison. “It's not far to the hotel now.” 

“I'll change out of these terrible boots, and then perhaps we can go walking. Where do you want to go? We are to be travelling companions, aren't we? Where do respectable travelling companions go? Or will we bother to be respectable?” 

“I think we'll bother,” Bella said. She wasn't sure of the answer to any of Emma's other questions. 

Calais was grim, and Bella felt the cold. Autumn in Italy was warmer than in France, and Bella had felt her feet and hands growing colder and more uncomfortable the closer she travelled to Calais. Emma, on the other hand, seemed entirely unaffected by the drizzle. She took Bella's hand and led her from shop to café, making demands in terrible French that occasionally wandered into the peculiar Latin that had been spoken in Lost-hope. Bella could not ever remember feeling colder or more uncomfortable than that afternoon with Emma. They marched further from the city; Emma in the stout boots she had taken from her trunk of belongings, Bella in leather slippers that had seemed so delightful in Siena. 

“Enough,” Bella said, when Emma suggested walking towards a grim little tower, which seemed several miles from the town. It was getting dark. 

“But it looks so charming.” Emma was flushed, her eyes bright. She looked like a feverish child. 

“I can't,” Bella said, “And you shouldn't. We ought to get back. We've been out for far too long as it is.” 

Emma rubbed her eyes with her hands. Bella saw now that Emma's fingers were trembling, and suddenly her breathing, which had been a little quick from exertion, turned into ragged, gasping sobs. 

Bella felt like her feet would give out if she had to stand around while Emma cried. “Oh, come here,” she said, and pulled them both down onto a low, wet stone. Emma was a warm weight against her side, and Bella was grateful for that warmth. She felt Emma snuffle into her neck. 

It was strange to feel Emma trembling under her fingers. Her back heaved against her stays, her wet mouth hot at Bella's skin. Bella couldn't remember the last time she herself had cried. There was never any time. 

“Oh, you,” Bella said, pressing a kiss to the crown of Emma's head. “Oh, you.” 

“I can't sleep,” Emma said in a ragged gasp. “What if it isn't better here? What if I never sleep?” 

Bella wanted to be brisk. She remembered how her nurse had spoken about nightmares when she was a child, telling her one simply musn't give them any credence. The nurse had been so firm, and had made Bella drink hot milk, which she thought was a kindness, but which Bella hated. Bella had stopped talking about the spidery man that lived inside her mirror, or the black ravens that tapped on the ceiling. 

She wanted to be brisk, but instead she held Emma close and didn't say anything at all. She stroked the soft hair and the soft cheeks and felt Emma trembling against her and thought how terribly unfair it was that Emma of all people had been taken by the Fairy King. Emma couldn't accept life's injustices; Emma went on being angry. 

She curled her cold toes in her cold slippers, and kissed Emma's forehead. Emma looked at her, flushed and tired, her eyes wet and bright. It was growing very dim and Bella hoped the hotel would still serve them supper. “Oh Bella,” Emma said. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry I couldn't save you.” 

If Emma had apologised for dragging her out here, or crying on her dress, Bella would have thought she was entirely in the right to accept it handsomely. But now she put her hand over Emma's mouth and said, “I wish I had saved you, my dear.” 

Emma blinked dark, wet eyes. Bella knew she should take her hand away, but it remained, resting against Emma's lips, Emma's breath hot and damp in her palm. They looked at one another, and then Emma kissed the palm, softly, tenderly as a lover, and pulled her head quickly back. “Come on, then,” she said, as though Bella had been the one keeping them out. 

At the hotel, Bella went to her room to change. They would not dress for dinner; the hotel would provide only soup and bread. It would be a small, make-shift meal, and again Bella missed hot pastries in Florence; rich meat stew in Venice. She sat on the edge of her bed to remove her slippers and found she could not stop shivering. 

She felt rather detached from herself, as though her hands, arms, chin and thighs were not at all her own, but belonged to some odd, shaking creature who had nothing to do with her. She stood outside herself and saw her her pale face and trembling limbs and felt her breath vanishing in her chest, and thought, How mad you look. Just like Emma. Stop it at once. 

She couldn't. Her breath seemed harder and harder to catch, and that made the shivering worse. What would Jonathan say? She tried to return to Jonathan as a point of solace and comfort, but Jonathan had never said a comforting word in his life, and she had never needed him to. There was nothing reassuring to remember, only his wildness, which she had so enjoyed. 

She felt wild now, but not in a pleasant way. She felt wild like the deer, frozen the moment before it was shot; wild like the grouse beaten from the undergrowth. 

The door opened: it was Emma, and in that strange, detached way, Bella was annoyed she had not bothered to knock. Bella wanted to greet her but found she could not speak. Her chin shook helplessly, her chest was hot and empty, her eyes bulged. 

Emma came to her at once, and put her hand on Bella's cheek. She touched Bella's neck, as though feeling for a pulse. Get a doctor, Bella thought, I may be dying. And then she thought: Don't get a doctor. I can't bear anyone to touch me but you. 

She still couldn't say anything at all. 

Emma brought her a glass of water that Bella could not hold. A quantity of it spilled over her chin and neck. Emma put the glass to one side. Bella had already begun to get undressed before the shaking had overcome her, and Emma opened her dress further, loosening the stays. The loss of pressure didn't help at all. Bella felt like she was floating away, spiralling out of her breathless body. 

“It's all right.” Emma chewed on her lower lip, and continued rapidly, “It isn't all right, of course, it's terrible, unbearable. Unreasonable. But you will be all right.” She knelt in front of Bella, holding both of Bella's hands in hers. “You will be all right.” 

She seemed so calm. Bella was able to suck in another breath, a short, painful gasp. “What's happening to me?” 

“You're afraid, Bella, dear.” 

“No, I'm not.” 

Emma didn't answer this. She lifted Bella's hand and kissed it, then her fingers. “I still dream of dancing,” she said. “It seems so unreasonable. I wake, sometimes, so exhausted, as though I truly had danced all night. And I wonder if I have been taken again. And other nights I don't sleep, and I walk and walk, and the walking begins to feel like dancing...” 

She rested her head against Bella's hands. “What do you dream of?” Emma asked. 

Bella bit her lip. She realised her breath was coming easier now, though it seemed to remain high in her chest, as though it would not really fill her lungs. “Dancing,” she said at last. “Dancing, and drowning. And I sleep, I sleep like I've drowned, and I wake up thinking I'm dead, and choking on nothing.” 

Emma kissed the inside of Bella's wrist, then her forearm. “Dearest,” she said. 

Bella looked down at her. Emma looked just like Jonathan, when he desperately wanted to hold her, but was afraid she would be angry. Emma's kiss was firm and deliberate, and Bella did not have to wonder what it meant. She only wondered if she should turn Emma out, say she would see her tomorrow at breakfast, or if she should lie back on the bed, and gather Emma into her arms. 

She stood carefully, on trembling legs. Emma remained kneeling, looking up at her, her pink face framed in its unruly brown curls. 

“Help me undress,” Bella said. 

Emma rose and stood behind her, carefully unclasping hooks and eyes. “It's rather freeing, isn't it, not having a maid? I was cross when Sir Walter wouldn't pay for me to bring mine, but now I'm glad.” 

She pulled the dress from Bella's shoulders. Bella felt small and cold without it, exposed. Her body felt like her own again, and she was aware of the pain in her limbs, her blistered feet, her burning throat. Bella stepped out of the stiff fabric, stood in only her slip. She felt, for a moment, like a child, waiting for her nurse to come and hear her prayers. 

But Emma was looking at her hungrily, as though every breath of Bella's was fascinating, and Bella suddenly felt calm, a strange, deep calmness, that she had not expected, but which felt entirely familiar. 

“Turn around,” Bella said, and she helped Emma to undo her own dress. Emma stepped out of it easily. There were sweat-stains under her arms, and the hair on her legs was darker and thicker than Bella's own. But otherwise she seemed familiar, as though Bella had all her life known just what Emma would look like. 

Bella touched Emma's cheek, then her forehead. “Aren't you cold?” she said. 

“I'm never cold.” 

“Warm me up, then,” Bella said. She sat on the edge of her bed, and then swung her legs up onto it too. She leant against the bolster. Emma was looking at her both eagerly and uncertainly. Bella could feel the weight of her eyes on her skin, see the nervousness at Emma's mouth. After a moment, she drew in her breath sharply, and she lay down next to Bella, spreading the length of herself against Bella's side. She emanated heat. She smelt damp and salty and very faintly of lavender, and Bella pressed her nose against Emma's throat, breathing her in. 

Bella felt Emma's indrawn breath, and felt her lean into Bella's touch. What am I doing? Bella thought. But it was a thought from far away, and she dismissed it. She knew precisely what she was doing. She was afraid of many things after leaving Fairy, but she was not afraid of this. 

Emma put her hand on Bella's shoulder, leaning into her, her thigh resting against Bella's own. Bella turned her head, looking at Emma's profile, suddenly so close to her own. She could see the place where the pinkness of Emma's cheeks shaded into white, see the faint freckles high on her forehead.

Bella felt outside of herself again, looking down on two dark haired woman pressed so close on a small, French bed, their breath shallow, and their hands uncertain. Then she was inside her body again and she felt the coldness of her feet and the ache of her limbs and Emma's sweet warmth. 

She kissed Emma's throat, and the hollow between her collar bones. Emma shuddered, as though the slightest touch overwhelmed her. 

“What do you want, Emma?” Bella said. 

Emma looked at her with wet eyes, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed. Bella felt unbearably tender towards her suddenly: she wanted to hold her close, to protect her, to make her feel wanted. 

Bella put her hand on Emma's thigh, and felt Emma tremble again. With need, Bella thought. With want. “Don't you know?” Bella asked. 

Emma shook her head, and then said, voice rough, “You.” 

And Bella smiled and kissed her, finally, on her soft mouth. She remember the stories of princes waking their beloved with a kiss. But there was no magic, and no longer any enchantment to break. There was just the heat of their mouths, and the feeling of their breath, and the soft landscape of two bodies coming together.


End file.
